


Witching Time of Night

by SuchStuffAsDreamsAreMadeOn



Category: The Crucible - Miller
Genre: But I figured I'd share it anyway, F/M, Happy Halloween!!, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of abortion/misscarriage, Physical Abuse, This is just something really old I found from high school, Witchcraft, it's really not that good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 23:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16482083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuchStuffAsDreamsAreMadeOn/pseuds/SuchStuffAsDreamsAreMadeOn
Summary: John Proctor and Abigail Williams meet in the woods, each needing something the other is unwilling to give.A re-imagining of the cut forest scene from Arthur Miller'sThe Crucible.





	Witching Time of Night

**Author's Note:**

> This was something I wrote for a high school class about a million years ago. I found it recently and cleaned it up a bit and figured I'd post it for Halloween.

Abigail shivered in the night air. She hadn’t minded the woods until that night a few months earlier; it hadn’t stuck the cold fear into her like it did now. With only her nightgown and her cloak to keep her warm the night wind bit into her, but she had come, just as He had told her to. When she heard the pebbles on her window - waking her mercifully from sleep - she had known that tonight would be the night. Somewhere deep inside of her, a place she didn’t want to look but knew was there anyway, she was glad.  
The light showed in the clearing just ahead. The soft light welcomed her, but she knew it wouldn’t last.  
There it was again, that shiver of anticipation. She pushed it away. She didn’t want to know herself.  
He was waiting for her as she knew he would be and she couldn’t help the smile that touched her lips. He was handsome, his hair hanging down to touch his neck, his back straight. She still loved him. But tonight, tonight was different. She knew that.  
“I must speak with you,” he said without turning around. She stood still, waiting. She remembered once, not long after she’d come here, she had been walking on the rode near his fields when she had stepped in a rabbit hole and sprained her ankle. She had screamed and he had come running. He had found her lying on the ground in the road. He had checked her ankle then scooped her up in his arms and carried her the two miles back to her house as if she weighed nothing more than a feather. That was the first time she had really loved him.  
“Will you sit?” he asked, finally turning to look at her. In the light from the lantern he held his eyes looked shadowed and old, the sharp line of his jaw made sharper by the darkness. There was something about him that was different, something harder, something that made her wonder if what she planned to do tonight would work. But she knew she had to try. She shuddered to think what would happen if she failed.  
She moved closer to him, seeking his warmth as a bear seeks honey. “I don’t like the woods at night.” It was not a lie. He stood stoically still, looking down at her. She had not done up her hair and it fell like midnight water down her back, cascading over her shoulders in inky curls. He could see her shiver in the air. The woods were always cold at night these days, no matter what the season and her thin, almost see-through nightgown did little to cover her frame and less to keep the cold out. A few months ago, the sight of her so scantily clad would have done something to him, awoken something in him, but now his heart was stone.  
“I knew it must be you,” she told him in a low whisper, “When I heard the pebbles on the window, before I opened up my eyes I knew.” She took his hand and drew him to a nearby log. He didn’t resist, and when she sat he sat next to her. Maybe, he told himself, maybe there was still hope. She was just a girl, she had no idea what she was doing. He knew that was a lie.  
She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder and twining her arms about his. Still he did not react, did not even really look at her. “I thought you would come a good time sooner.”  
“I had thought to come many times.”  
“Why didn’t you? I am so alone in the world now.” There was a note of truth in her voice that he hadn’t heard there before. He looked at her sharply. How could she say that? Was she locked up in a jail cell, accused of something she’d never done? No, she was the accuser, not the accused.  
“Are you!” was all he said, “I’ve heard that people ride a hundred mile to see your face these days.”  
Abigail gave a humorless laugh, “Aye, my face.” But still he would not look at her. Reaching up she touched his cheek, turning his head to face her. He hadn’t shaved in a day or two. “Can you see my face?”  
John searched her eyes and something close to hope crossed his features. He reached up and drew her hand away from his cheek, holding it tightly as if it were a life line.  
“Then you’re troubled?”  
Something changed in Abigail’s eyes in that instant, something snapped. John could almost feel her slipping into a world of madness, a world that she was struggling to hide from him.  
“Have you come to mock me?” She cried, pulling away from him and standing. Her fists were clenched at her sides.  
He knew that like this he would never be able to get what he needed from her. He put up his hands, trying to calm her, to placate her. “No,” he said soothingly, “No, but I hear only that you go to the tavern every night and play shovelboard with the Deputy Governor... and they give you cider.” If that couldn't tease a smile out of her nothing could. One day, when she had only been working for him for a week or so, John had found her in the cellar with a bottle of cider in her hand. At first she had claimed that she had been sent by Mrs. Proctor to fetch it, but he knew it was a lie. She had begged him not to dismiss her, to punish her in any other way, but not to dismiss her. He just laughed and said that if his wife found a half empty bottle in the cellar she would be suspicious, so he spent the rest of the afternoon helping her to finish the bottle. It had been their secret joke ever since.  
It did earn a sort of half smile from her, and her eyes seemed to regain some of the light that had been leached out of them.  
“I have once or twice played the shovelboard.” she admitted. “But I take no joy in it.”  
John raised his eyebrows. “This is a surprise, Abby. I’d thought to find you gayer than this. I’m told a troop of boys go step for step with you wherever you walk these days.”  
Abigail couldn’t tell if it was wishful thinking way playing tricks on her, but she thought she heard just a hint of sadness in his voice. So, it was just as He had said it would be. She knew what she had to do.  
“Aye, they do.” She said, moving closer to him again, “But I have only lewd looks from the boys.”  
“And you like that not?”  
“I cannot bear lewd looks no more, John.” She was standing right above him, now. He had to look up to see her face. “My spirit’s changed entirely. I ought be given Godly looks when I suffer for them as I do.”  
“Oh?” It was all John could do to keep from calling her child, please her and not point out her madness. He still needed her, he reminded himself. “How do you suffer, Abby?”  
Abigail put her bare foot up on the log next to him and pulled her dress up past her knees. John stiffened, the impropriety of the situation shocking him. He knew what she wanted, and he knew that he could never give it to her. No matter what was going to happen tomorrow, he could not sin again.  
“Why look at my leg.” He looked, almost against his will. “I’m holes all over from their damned needles and pins.” She held a hand to her stomach and he could see that she was shaking. “The jab your wife gave me’s not healed yet, y’know.” Her quivering voice was almost a whisper when she said it.  
He could see her madness surfacing again, her eyes growing black. There was a part of him that still saw her as the helpless girl he had found lying in the road unable to walk who hugged him and cried in pain when he had checked to see if her ankle was broken. But that girl was gone.  
“Oh, it isn’t?”  
“I think sometimes she pricks it open again while I sleep.”  
“Ah?” was all John could choke out.  
“And George Jacobs,” she pulled at the string of the collar of her nightgown, then pulled the neckline over her shoulder, baring her skin so he could see the red welts on her upper arm and much more than that besides. “He comes again and again and raps me with his stick - the same spot every night all this week. Look at the lump I have.”  
It was too much for John and he stood and cupped her face in his hands, begging her to see reason, to fight off the madness that had taken her.  
“Abby-” it was all he could do to keep his voice from breaking, “George Jacobs is in the jail all this month.”  
“Thank God he is,” Abby cried, jerking away from him. “And bless the day he hangs and lets me sleep in peace again! Oh, John, the world’s all full of hypocrites!” She came towards him as if she wanted him to hold her, her voice caught on the tears of madness. “They pray in jail! I’m told they all pray in jail!”  
Now it was his turn to step away. “They may not pray?”  
He voice was strangled with outrage. “And torture me in my bed while scared words are comin’ from their mouths? Oh, it will need God Himself to cleanse this town properly!”  
John stared at her, aghast. “Abby - you mean to cry out still others?”  
“If I live! If I am not murdered! I surely will, until the last hypocrite is dead!”  
“Then there is no good?” He asked in a voice without hope.  
Abigail quieted at this and when she next spoke it was with a love that he had not prepared himself for. “Aye, there is one. You are good.”  
“Am I!” he cried in exasperation. Of all the people she could choose to see as ‘good’. But then his voice quieted into despair once again. “How am I good?” he asked, sitting.  
“Why, you taught me goodness,” she said, as if astonished that he didn’t already know the answer. “Therefore you are good. It were a fire you walked me though, and all my ignorance was burned away.” She stood in front of him straddling his legs, her skirts lifted up to just above her knees. “It were a fire, John, we lay in fire. And from that night no woman dare call me wicked any more but I knew my answer.” The neckline of her nightgown was still falling off she shoulders, hanging low on her slight frame. “I used to weep for my sins when the wind lifted up my skirts; and blushed for shame because some old Rebecca called me loose. And then you burned my ignorance away.” It was all he could do not to push her away from him. “As bare as some December tree I saw them all - Walking like saints to church, running to feed the sick, and hypocrites in their hearts! And God gave me strength to call them liars, and God made men to listen to me, and by God I will scrub the world clean for the love of Him!” She sat down in his lap, her skirts falling behind her, her legs still bare. “And you, you must help me, John. Together we will make the world white for our children. Say you’ll help me. Oh, John, I will make you such a wife when the world is white again!” She draped her arms around his neck, and in the light from the lantern he could see that again her eyes were dark. She leaned into him, her lips next to his ear, her breath warm on his cheek. “You will be amazed to see me every day, a light of heaven in your house, a--” He stood up suddenly, pushing her away from him, causing her to stumble. “Why are you cold?”  
His hands were fists at his sides and she thought for a moment that he would strike her, but all he said was, “My wife goes to trial in the morning. Abigail.”  
Distantly she said, “Your wife?”  
“Surely you knew of it?”  
She was on dangerous ground, she could tell from the ice in his voice. “I do remember it now. How - how - Is she well?”  
“As well as she may be, thirty-six days in that place.” His voice was tired and his shoulders seemed to droop. But then he straightened and looked back at her and said in a hard voice, “She will not be condemned, Abby.”  
“You brought me from my bed to speak of her?”  
“I come to tell you, Abby,” he said in the same hard voice, “what I will do tomorrow in the court. I would not take you by surprise, but give you all good time to think on what to do to save yourself.”  
A sudden dread filled Abigail. “Save myself?” He had never said anything about that...  
“If you do not free my wife tomorrow, I am set and bound to ruin you, Abby.”  
“How - ruin me?” she asked in a small voice, afraid of the answer.  
“I have rocky proof in documents that you knew that poppet were none of my wife’s;” he told her stonily, “and that you yourself bade Mary Warren stab that needle into it.”  
She stared at him, shock in her abnormally dark eyes. “I bade Mary Warren -?”  
He grabbed her arms, suddenly, and shook her. “You know what you do, you are not so mad!”  
“Oh, hypocrites!” Abigail shrieked to the sky, “Have you won him, too?” She turned back to him, gripping him, half to steady herself, half to entreat him. “John, why do you let them send you?”  
“I warn you, Abby!”  
“They send you! They steal your honesty and-”  
“I have found my honesty!” he yelled, yanking his arms away from her grasping hands.  
“No, this is your wife pleading, your sniveling, envious, God damned wife!” John stopped in his tracks and turned back to look at her.  
“You do not know, John, you do not know what she has done.” She was frantic, her hair and eyes wild. “That needle she has stabbed three inches deep into me.” She was crying freely now, her body shaking with sobs. She began clawing at her stomach as if she would tear the cloth of her dress to show him the wound. He caught her wrists and held her hands up to keep her from doing herself an injury. She shrieked and almost collapsed.  
“I was with child, John!” she screamed. In shock he let her go and she fell to the ground. A moment of complete silence rang out thought the glade, as loud as their shouts had been just a moment ago. The only sound was Abigail’s racking sobs.  
John stumbled back a few paces. He opened his mouth, found no words, then closed it again.  
“I was with child, John, your child.” Abigail sobbed. She lay in the grass, seemingly too weak even to stand. She forced herself to continue through the tears. “You would have known of it.... I was maybe a month gone, I would be showing by now....” She gasped in air, “Oh don’t you see John? We would have needs married.” She let out another scream. When she had caught her breath again she continued. “But then... that night in the woods-” her words were suddenly cut off. She struggled to breathe as if an invisible hand were clamped around her throat. John stared down at her with a horrible mixture of disgust and pity on his face. “Then she... she stabbed that needle into me, John.... and the next morning.....” Her words deteriorated into sobs once again. Then, without warning she screamed, “I will condemn her! I will condemn them all!!”  
Fury coursed through John, now, a furry he could barely understand. He knew he hated himself, but the hatred was also for Abigail and what she had done to his life. What she had done to every life in that village. He knelt down next to her and said in a low voice, “I’m glad.” He grabbed her and hauled her to her feet. “I will prove you for the fraud you are!”  
Abigail had stopped screaming. There were still tears on her cheeks, but her eyes had lost any life they had once had. “And if they ask you why Abigail would ever do so murderous a deed, what will you tell them?”  
“I will tell them why.”  
“What will you tell? You will confess to fornication? In the court?”  
“If you will have it so, so I will tell it!” She uttered a crazed laugh. “I say I will!” She laughed again and he shook her roughly. She was limp in his arms and it was only his hold on her that kept her standing. “If you can still hear, hear this! Can you hear? You will tell the court you are blind to spirits; you cannot see them any more, and you will never cry witchery again, or I will make you famous for the whore you are!”  
Abigail grabbed him and the strength of her grip surprised him. “Never in this world!” she cried. “I know you, John - you are this moment singing secret hallelujahs that your wife will hang!”  
It was too much for both of them. “You mad, you murderous bitch!!” John’s hand flew at her and the sound of the strike hung in the air a moment after Abigail’s head had whipped to the side. In an instant he threw her down to the ground, where she stayed, shaking with sobs. 

Abigail remained on the ground for a long time. She could taste the blood in her mouth and the cold seeping into her very heart, but she didn’t move. When she finally found the will to look up she was alone. The trees stood above her, looking down at her like Gods, laughing at her pain. She knew she deserved it.  
The only light left in the clearing was from the moon, which shown down with a clear, cold vengeance. It was nearly full tonight and looking around, Abigail needed no clock to tell her what time it was. It was the witching hour.  
As if to affirm her suspicions, an owl screeched nearby, just as a cloud floated across the moon, covering it from sight.  
Abigail stood up, wanting to be ready for what would happen next. There was complete silence, then, just as she was beginning to wonder if he wouldn’t come, there was a voice from the darkness.  
“Do you know me, child?” it asked.  
Abigail bowed her head. “I do.”  
“And do you swear allegiance to me? To Lucifer?”  
Abigail took a breath. “I do,” she said, just as she’d said every night since the night her uncle had found her dancing in the wood.  
The darkness chuckled, making Abigail’s knees quake, though she hoped the night and her skirts hid it.  
Suddenly there was a sound and a form appeared out of the darkness. The figure stood before her, it’s shape undefined in the darkness, only its eyes, glowing points of white, were truly distinguishable.  
“And?”  
“He will not turn.” Abigail said. “He has changed. This world has changed him.”  
“He must turn.” The shape said with a growl. “I gave you my instructions, did you not follow them?”  
“I did! I did!” Abigail protested, fear plainly showing in her voice now. “But he will not be swayed. He will not sin again.”  
The devil laughed and when he did it sounded like all damned souls were crying their lament. “Fool. Does he not know that he will burn for his sin? He has already sinned, there is no hope for him now.”  
“No, please. John Proctor may not be damned. He is not to blame, I am. He has repented where I have sinned. I am yours, now, to command. Is that not enough?” Her words were choked by tears.  
Again, that chuckle from the darkness. “Child, it is not I who damn souls, and God is never merciful.”  
“He can not be turned.” Abigail sobbed. “He will go to Heaven.”  
“He will be turned.” The voice was louder now. “You will turn him. You came to me asking me to kill his wife. Tomorrow that will be done and therefore you are bound to me. Fool of a child, you are mine, and no one else's. He will be turned, and if he is not then you will tell the court to hang him.”  
Abigail fell to her knees, tears streaking down her cheeks. “No, I can not. I will not. Please, you can not ask that of me.”  
“I can and do ask that of you. And you will do it, or do you forget that I can kill you as easily as I killed the child you bore?”  
The girl pressed her head to the ground, her cries audible through the hands with which she tried to stifle them.  
“He means to expose me at court. You must not let him, he must not expose me. My reputation will be ruined.” Suddenly there was fire in her veins, her blood turned to molten rock by the mere touch of the shadow before her. She screamed.  
“That,” the shadow said slowly, “is none of my concern.”  
When the shadow lifted its touch from her she fell back to the ground, her face covered in sweat, shivers shaking her.  
“You will turn John Proctor, or you will kill him. Is that clear?”  
Abigail bit her lip, then let out a moan, closed her eyes, and nodded.

John’s steps were uneven as he walked back through the woods, he was barely looking where he was going and every root and rabbit hole seemed to jump up and grab him, reminding him each time of Abigail, lying in the road next to his fields, so helpless and perfect. Images flashed through his mind, the same images that would haunt his dreams and keep him up at night. Her body pressed to his, their lips touching, the darkness in her eyes when she had spoke with him just a little while ago, and his wife. His dear, good wife who, after tomorrow, he may never see again. What had he done?  
Somewhere in the forest Abigail screamed, but this time John did not go running.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for taking the time to read this! I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at [wearesuchstuff1](http://wearesuchstuff1.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I do not own _The Crucible_ or any of the characters referenced in this work.


End file.
